H. Adler - Panorama

What do the visitors think about when they look at the little bit of dungeon left? Slowly it dawns on them, yes, this is where it happened. The reckoning lasts for a moment, yet they don’t dwell on it, it doesn’t affect them and in fact it doesn’t matter, Josef perhaps overly sensitive when he finds that it does affect him and causes him to sink into his old suffering again and believe that the strange and long-dead suffering here is his very own, even though it’s unhealthy to think so, lunacy, if not presumptuous and out of line. Much better is the fact that someone has hung a wreath from an iron bolt, a nice demonstration of thoughtfulness that seems reverent and touching, rather than simply strange, even if somewhat inept and in any case helpless. Josef would like such commemorations to effect a deep transformation, for posterity cannot simply weave a wreath for such suffering, because even if it is not one’s own one can surely empathize with past suffering, yet it no longer burns in your heart like a glowing thorn from having survived those times of extermination, though Josef feels the general suffering before him, which through someone else’s memory results in the hanging of an ornament, thus turning the strange suffering into a comfort, whether it be far off or in the past. Also, the wreath hung in honor of the Quaker elder will soon decay, it already having dried out while hanging from its iron bolt, which indeed makes it touching, such commemoration now a responsibility, as the wreath needs to be replaced, someone showing up to do it and taking the old one down, which is not allowed, that being a desecration, but it’s done nonetheless and the wreath is tossed away, which is completely improper, for at least he would sit there quietly after a new wreath is put up. Josef realizes how unreal it all is when one gets involved with past suffering, most pieties being disingenuous, since they mix the pure feeling of the honored ones with a certain strangeness that they can never penetrate, and which they never fulfill and know that they don’t, veneration an odd game in which nothing is so sacred that it is spared.

Now the dungeon is empty, everything completely desolate, though no longer sunk in darkness, for it is half destroyed, the four walls still rising, though they are broken here and there, neither roof nor ceiling arching over the prison, daylight fading, night just beginning to encase the ruins in silent darkness and renew each evening the fleeting hours of the once continual darkness so fitting to imprisonment, though no visitor can witness it, because the town fathers close the site for the night, even though historically there’s no real reason to do so, but historically this is what has been done, no one should see the darkness firsthand, the darkness that is history, all that is past, no need to think of it beyond what the visitor’s imagination can conjure already. The town fathers are right to forbid the night, for night is dangerous, people here have no relationship with the night, as they want the day to be eternal, for it values anything that has been secret and brings it into the light so that it can be seen by anyone, and seeing is valued by human society, or so one generally thinks, which is why we have symbols, or so we are told. But it doesn’t work, because sorrow is everlasting and is nestled away forever just out of the reach of day, no matter how much light shines on it, but sorrow is locked up and kept invisible, such that evil is not taken seriously, there being nothing that is evil. It’s right that plants should grow amid the dungeon, no one having worked harder to make things thrive than the gardeners here, but it is fresh growth, a lush profusion of leaves that possesses its own time, it being protected, since no one can enter the dungeon, although entry is not forbidden, though the visitor sees that a bar prevents entry into the prison, it being unbelievable that such a peaceful place once hid a prison. Thus, outside in front of the prison one composes one’s thoughts, for there is nothing for the viewer to see on the inside, and so what else can he do? It won’t do any good to barge in, there is nothing there to see that can’t already be seen from the outside, the plaques having already let everyone know what there is to know.

But how was it in the prison? There is nothing to be seen that provides a clear picture, appearances show only that it must have been lonely and oppressive, the prisoner unable to enjoy the flowers, or the view of the Cornish countryside, the prison a chasm meant to punish, one that should have caused a complete conversion, though that didn’t happen, and so it became a source of shame for the oppressor. It’s a pity for his posthumous reputation that today it’s so peaceful here, for that is not what he sought, but fleeting history has easily whisked away the sins of the powerful Conqueror and precariously transferred them to the control of those he hunted down and tormented. Does Josef indeed understand these ruins? No, he doesn’t, he values the present and doesn’t linger amid the strange memories that mean so much to the English, particularly the people of Launceston and the Quakers, but which to Josef are foreign, he unable to know anything of it, he not a part of it and just here to enjoy the quiet and the view. No one in Launceston knows Josef except the hostess in The Red Bull who took down his personal information in the thick guest book of the small hotel, where peppered cabbage is served up morning, noon, and night, just as it appears to have been served for centuries, the hotel quite old, the door originating from the beginning of the fifteenth century, as a plaque informs one, though who knows how things looked then when the stubborn Quaker was locked up in the castle above and fed only bread and water by the prison warden, while the prisoner would have been happy to have a bowl of cabbage from The Red Bull served up to him each day, though that hardly happened, George Fox perhaps never having heard of this inn that stands no more than ten minutes away from his dungeon. Josef, however, can enter whenever he likes, the door to The Red Bull always open to him, he having only to pay in order to have the right as a guest to sit in the solarium, where he can have a small snack and a drink, or read the paper or a book, no one there to bother him with their views, for the people talk quietly and are discreet, they being quite civilized, only the old worn clock dicing up the time with resonant thrums, striking every quarter hour with four breaking chimes. Josef finds their intrusive beats to be bothersome and hopes that the Quaker elder was spared them, but perhaps he loved clocks and found their disturbing beats a comfort in the dungeon, yet Josef never liked loud clocks, he always wanting the one in the underground hall to remain quiet, he now able at any time to escape the bongs of an English clock, as there are quieter rooms for the guests, or Josef can go to his room, though it’s not all that homey there, it being an affront to the customs of the land to spend the day there, the room only a place for sleep and unconsciousness, Josef avoiding The Red Bull except at night and during meals.

Josef feels like a stranger and knows he needs to remain so, for he needs for once to be at peace within himself. It’s not his fault that he can’t quite do so, for that is only because he is alive, he is here, and he is always here, which is not an illusion that stubbornly persists, no, it is indeed true and is also so in sleep, everything part of the sleeping state that fills Josef and surrounds him. That’s why it’s fine that the place has a foreign history that Josef hardly knows, and which is not necessary to know any more of beyond what he read on the plaque and considered, it calling out to every visitor to be read and appreciated. For certainly Josef is also free to ignore the plaque, but that would be ungrateful, since this indeed is all there is, there’s nothing more to learn, there’s nothing else to know, what the town fathers pass on to the general public is indeed the proper proportion of what has been left behind, namely matters of historical interest, for which there is also the town library or the Quakers themselves, who might have more information to share. Josef doesn’t need particulars, he’s willing to believe what’s written here and trusts the town of Launceston’s own valuation of the truth, they have made sure that all the dates are exactly right, after which the inscriber took the carefully prepared text and dutifully and reliably carried out his handiwork, someone making sure afterward to compare it with the original before it was installed, the pride and satisfaction in Launceston immense, everyone pleased at last to have the Quaker’s broken past restored, the inhabitants of Launceston now able to quietly go about their daily business, the park with its tower and castle ruin turned over to the care of the gardeners and the attendants.